Rest in peace, John Paul II, and now the one-liners are flying in on wings of angels. Janos Gereben, listening to "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me" over the weekend, heard someone say that Ralph Nader is going to run for pope, observing that "there is no difference between the other candidates, they even dress alike." Meanwhile, during coffee hour at St. John the Evangelist, the Rev. Robert Cromey heard one parishioner ask, "Is it true Ronald Reagan planned the pope's funeral?," which was perhaps a reference to the majesty of the occasion.

The Enchanters got together again two weekends ago, 20 years after the breakup of the punk/oldies band, which used to play at the Mabuhay, Chichi Club, Keystone and Alameda Naval Air Station. Members recently discovered that one of the three lead singers, a woman named Morningstar, has dementia and is living at Laguna Honda Hospital. The reunion was a performance for her.

Morningstar watched along with members of her family and fellow residents of the facility, and eventually "joined us onstage to dance and sing along," says singer Kathi Kamen Goldmark. "As the set went on, she began to remember some of the lyrics and vocal arrangements, and even took a solo line here and there -- her voice is as sweet and pretty as ever." At the end she told the band she was so happy she was "floating up to heaven."

In other memorable performances, Shelly Roder says that on the way out of a San Francisco Symphony concert featuring Natalia Gutman last week, she heard a high school student telling his buddy, "She really kicked some ass on that cello." Catherine Leroy, whose Vietnam War photographs are featured in a new book "UnderFire," will be at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism on Tuesday, to sign books and talk about journalists covering wars from Vietnam to Iraq with British photographer Don McCullin and others. Leroy was 21 when she bought a one-way ticket to Saigon; eventually, she was captured by the Viet Cong and injured. The book's a historic record of a bloody time, but life does go on. Nowadays Leroy presides over Pieceunique.com, described on its site as a "high-end online fashion catalog featuring new and vintage couture garments and accessories." He once presided merrily over San Francisco Municipal Traffic Court, offering understanding, solace and reduced fines to naughty parkers, and now Jerry Levitin is the author of "I'd Kill for a Parking Place," a play about "murder, traffic court and dentistry" that opens at the Shelton Theater at the end of the month.

Levitin ran for municipal judge in 1980, but was accused by KRON of having received campaign contributions from businesses whose fines he had lowered in traffic court. A few days before the June election, a criminal investigation cleared him -- he was sympathetic to the plight of drivers, and records showed that he had lowered fines for everyone -- and a few months after the vote, KRON formally retracted its claims. By that time, he had lost.

Watched "Up for Grabs," the documentary that opens Friday about the legal fight over Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball. The whole story's like a fable about a crow losing what he has in his mouth in his greed to gobble something more, or a fable about a boy who reaches into a jar and, trying to take too big a handful of nuts, gets his hand stuck, or a fable about a dog crossing a stream to get a bigger piece of meat and dropping into the water the one he had.

The main characters are anything but heroes, but the zippily edited footage of Bonds blasting each of the 73 homers -- each shown in about half a second: bam! boom! blap! baroooom! and into the cove -- is irresistible.

P.S. Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, colleagues here at The Chronicle and uncoverers of the BALCO steroids scandal, are taking leaves to write a book about BALCO and Bonds. Brendan Cahill of Gotham, which will publish the book, told Editor & Publisher its title could be "Barbarians at the Plate." But when I asked the reporters for some juicy dish on this project -- for example, how many times did they get the finger in the course of research for this story? -- they were mum; it's a stoic guy thing, I guess.

P.P.S. I've received a report of a sighting of a BALCO sweatshirt; under the name of the company was imprinted the size, XXXXXXXXL.

A lawyer's letter has been received by Tim Gaskin, who painted a room at the Hotel des Arts in homage to Madonna and Louis Vuitton. The Vuitton enforcers saw the room pictured in Women's Wear Daily, did not like the use of the company logo, and are demanding a repainting. Public eavesdropping

"We don't have 'Huckleberry Finn' in stock, but we have 'Huckleberry Hound and Friends.' Do you want that?"